Unlimited Wireless Internet For $35, Not $350

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After finding out about the $350/month AT&T wireless data plan, you might be looking for something a little cheaper. How about $35/month? I recently spoke to Cricket, a smaller wireless carrier that’s selling truly unlimited wireless data for, yes, $35/month in some US cities. Forget $350 – that’s even lower than the $60/month the big guys charge for under 5GB of traffic.

Cricket uses the EVDO Rev 0 system, which is slightly slower than the big guys – expect speeds of 500-700 kbps/sec. But on the other hand, according to Cricket, it’s really, truly unlimited. There’s no semi-secret 5-gigabyte cap.

“We expect our customers will be heavy, heavy data users, and we’ve never thought limits were a good idea,” said Cricket senior manager for corporate communications Greg Lund.

Want to use it to replace a DSL line? Go for it. Want to game or download all night? Sure. Just hang up every once in a while, and don’t try to run a Web server – the one relevant term in Cricket’s terms of service prohibits using the network “continuously, with or without breaks, so as to create the functional equivalent of a telephone line dedicated to continuous use.”

The big bummer here is Cricket’s very limited coverage area. Their data service is only in five areas: Nashville; Spokane; the Central Valley of California; Santa Fe/Albuquerque, NM; and Portland, OR. Tulsa, OK is coming soon, Lund said, followed by more markets. Sadly, New York is not on their list of future markets, so we here at Gearlog won’t be able to taste the cheap unlimited data.